TN: Da Other Prof and Old Sancerre (Apr 12, 2012)

A fine question. Low self-esteem is a devil, I guess.

Also, I tend to cloak and mock my own attitudes through bombastic overstatement, so while I don't exactly qualify as a dirty fucking hippie myself, and while I suppose if you tied me down and forced me to be tediously literal (or 'literal') I would not endorse the dirty fucking hippie catechism in its entirety, I nonetheless retain a great deal of sympathy with the goals and values of the dirty fucking hippies, and would even go so far as to say I vastly prefer those goals and values to the dominant goals and values of the culture in which I find myself living today.

Or, in other words, what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

God, it's only 1:30 and I already need a drink.
 
The difference between telling one's students to address one by one's first name because one believes in a classless society, free love... and telling one's students that one believes in free love seems perishingly small to me in terms of big brother administration watching. So I hereby diss (is "diss" a performative) Rahsaan for apologizing and reinvoke the offending sentence myself.

I completely sympathize both with Steven's sympathy for fucking hippies and his irony at his own sympathy and I think the consequence of that uncomfortably ironic sympathy would be to bear the burden of the sentence "I believe...in free love." Even recognizing all the downsides to it, certainly it is superior to prostitution, which would be the opposite of free love, I guess.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The difference between telling one's students to address one by one's first name because one believes in a classless society, free love... and telling one's students that one believes in free love seems perishingly small to me in terms of big brother administration watching. So I hereby diss (is "diss" a performative) Rahsaan for apologizing and reinvoke the offending sentence myself.

You have a knack for dragging these things out!

But I understood that he told his students to address him by his first name. End of story. Full stop. No additional information transmitted.

He later told us - and only us - that the reason for this was because of his various beliefs.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The difference between telling one's students to address one by one's first name because one believes in a classless society, free love... and telling one's students that one believes in free love seems perishingly small to me in terms of big brother administration watching. So I hereby diss (is "diss" a performative) Rahsaan for apologizing and reinvoke the offending sentence myself.

You have a knack for dragging these things out!

But I understood that he told his students to address him by his first name. End of story. Full stop. No additional information transmitted.

He later told us - and only us - that the reason for this was because of his various beliefs.

A tenable interpretation. I hereby withdraw my diss. I maintain my reinvocation, however, since, in the absence of a period after the statement about what he told his students, he could easily have been saying that he told them his reasons as well.
 
Rahsaan wins the hermeneutics cage match on this one, at lest round two.

I don't know where to find windowpane any more even if I could stand to take it. Another reason to drink more as you get older is that only kids know where to get the illegal stuff.
 
originally posted by Steven Spielmann:
[...]

I don't know where to find windowpane any more even if I could stand to take it. Another reason to drink more as you get older is that only kids know where to get the illegal stuff.

Defenestration, I guess.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
no 'attack' or 'middle' or 'finish' it just takes you up the mountain, let's you see the view, and takes you down again

I once shared the '96 Huet in question for a special meal, which is why I think this is one of the best things I've read about a wine in just about ever. Because that's just what it does.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by VLM:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
In grad school, at a certain point, profs did move us to a first-name basis, I think as a form of acceptance into the guild.

That was my experience, at least within my committee. I generally use Professor as an honorific. It is a step up from Dr., which I would like to reserve for people who have actually written a dissertation.

My students wanted to call me Professor when I was a graduate student teacher, which I quickly corrected.

As colleagues, we often refer to each other as "Dr. X" or "Prof. Y". It is mostly slightly ironic except in the case of introducing colleagues to outsiders.

I like to ask medical doctors the subject of their dissertation.

Oh, come on. Everybody knows that MDs are the real doctors. Remember the old joke:
"My son just became a doctor."

"Is he a doctor doctor, or just a dentist doctor."

"Worse, he's a professor doctor."

Also, if you get your reservation in a restaurant as a doctor, they will be real peeved if one of their patrons needs emergency help and they turn to you.

This reminds me of the time, many years ago, when the missus finagled last-minute reservations at a semi-trendy restaurant, after being initially rebuffed, by calling back and pretending to be the receptionist for "Dr. Coad." When we got there the host greeted me "Good evening, Dr. Coad!" and I, unaware of the subterfuge but with a degree in acting, followed the improv dictate: never negate. So I played along. That was the restaurant with the $900 bottle of Chianti, I'm still trying to figure that one out.

The odd thing is that she now dislikes being called "Doctor," even at work. She gleefully related the story last July, when a wet-behind-the-ears intern called for a neuro consult, saying "This is Doctor So-and-So," and she responded "Hi, Doctor So-and-So, I'm Lisa, the Peds Neuro Fellow." And when she called him back she made sure to ask the nurse to ask for "Doctor So-and-So."
 
Back
Top